So, last night, we're doing normal stuff. Dishes, homework, laying on the couch, the usual evening routine, until... "OUCH!", and some cursing, from my wife, who just doesn't DO four-letter words. She'd stepped on a sewing needle that had somehow ended up in the carpet. "I felt that sucker grate against bone," she said, to sympathetic wincing from everybody.
Initial treatment for a puncture like this isn't hard. You wash the area, check to make sure the needle hasn't broken inside the wound, smear on some antibiotic/antiseptic goo, bandage. For a followup, we should make an appointment with the family doc and go get a tetanus shot in the next day or two. No big deal.. except that we can't do it. No money, because my unemployment ran out. No insurance, because the unemployment was a hair too much for us to be eligible for Medicaid.
So, instead, we get to wait, and watch for symptoms of lockjaw, and if she starts showing those, THEN we get to go to the emergency room and they'll do something expensive about it, which we will then be billed for. not that we'll ever actually be able to pay for it.
This isn't a big horror story. It's just that this is today's horror story, in my particular house. Wait a few months, we'll have another, a toothache that we hope goes away, a migraine that we treat with Excedrin and a dark room never mind that her entire right side's gone dead, something. Those are stories for other days, and I've already got enough to deal with right now, thank you.
Update: Mrs. Mjfgates says, "Thank you all for the advice and concern. I have had a tetanus shot in the last 5 years but he didn't know it, I didn't realize that he was worried until I saw his post. In case of other microbes I let it bleed, scrubbed it with soap and water, cleaned it out with peroxide and then covered it with antibiotic cream and a bandage. But I agree with all of you. If I had needed one I would have gotten the shot somehow. Hell, if nothing else I'd have shown up at ER and told the triage nurse I needed one. Tetanus is not something to mess about with."